Ignore the buzz about the hum

Capital Region's luck and location help it avoid insect infestation

By Emily McNutt

Updated 11:01 am, Thursday, June 13, 2013

Cicadas are emerging from the ground, where they have been larva feeding on tree roots for the last 17 years. They make a shrill ringing sound. These were in Hyde Park, NY. (Paul Grondahl / Times Union)

Media: Times Union

We heard they'd get in our hair and keep us up all night with their incessant hum. We imagined the 17-year cicadas emerging from the ground to infest the Capital Region with their blood-red eyes and veiny wings.

Cicadas were as hot a topic leading into summer as cronuts and Justin Bieber's pet monkey.

And now, the time has come.

Sooooooo, where are they?

You may see occasional reports from people who say they've spotted cicadas in Troy (like on the Brian Lehrer Show's tracking website), but Brood II cicadas were never expected to show their triangular-shaped faces in most of the Capital Region. According to the Department of Agriculture's historic records, the last time cicadas were reported in Albany County was 1911.

Now, the closest reported cicadas are in Stuyvesant, about 20 miles south of Albany, according to Magicicada.org, a website dedicated to the tracking of cicadas, That area seems to be the Mason-Dixon line of cicadas in the region, having remained that way for the last several emergences.

But what is it about this particular brood that doesn't allow them to cross a hypothetical line between Albany, a cicada-free region, and just south of the county, an area that is infested with the flying, singing creatures? The answer is not clear, even for those who study the insects year-round.

Photo: Paul Buckowski

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Cicadas in trees along Route 9 on Wednesday, June 12, 2013 in Hyde Park, NY. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union)

Cicadas in trees along Route 9 on Wednesday, June 12, 2013 in Hyde Park, NY. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union)

Photo: Paul Buckowski

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Cicadas in trees along Route 9 on Wednesday, June 12, 2013 in Hyde Park, NY. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union)

Cicadas in trees along Route 9 on Wednesday, June 12, 2013 in Hyde Park, NY. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union)

Photo: Paul Buckowski

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Cicadas in trees along Route 9 on Wednesday, June 12, 2013 in Hyde Park, NY. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union)

Cicadas in trees along Route 9 on Wednesday, June 12, 2013 in Hyde Park, NY. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union)

Photo: Paul Buckowski

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Cicadas in trees along Route 9 on Wednesday, June 12, 2013 in Hyde Park, NY. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union)

Cicadas in trees along Route 9 on Wednesday, June 12, 2013 in Hyde Park, NY. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union)

Photo: Paul Buckowski

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Cicadas in trees along Route 9 on Wednesday, June 12, 2013 in Hyde Park, NY. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union)

Cicadas in trees along Route 9 on Wednesday, June 12, 2013 in Hyde Park, NY. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union)

Photo: Paul Buckowski

Ignore the buzz about the hum

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Gene Kritsky, a professor of biology at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, offers two possible explanations based on another brood of cicadas disappearing from central and western New York.

Kritsky says habitat destruction plays a key role in the life cycle of a cicada. If cicadas go into the ground in a wooded area and emerge 17 years later to massive buildings and interstates, they are not going to thrive and reproduce. Also, climate change has played a role in what areas are ideal for the insects. Limiting the number of trees native to a region can severely fragment the population of cicadas in an area.

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The bug life

The species that graces us with its presence once every 17 years is one that's unlike anything of its kind:

The cicada lives for 17 years. Most of their time is spent underground, attached to a tree root and eating its xylem, which is mostly water with almost no nutritional value.

Hungry? Karban says to eat the cicada when it first breaks out of its shell, still white in color. They taste like avocados.

They prefer sunny weather. In the rain, you won't be able to hear them singing or see them flying from tree to tree.

When the birds eat them, they spit out the wings almost like seeds. As the emergence goes on, you'll see an accumulation of shiny cicada wings on the ground.

There are three species in Brood II. None of them mate with each other, and they all have different songs. The female has an ova posita, which acts like a saw to cut open twigs so she can insert her eggs.

A fungus, Massospora, has developed and germinates every 17 years, in synchronization with the cicadas. It only attacks the cicadas and fills the tiny insects' bodies with white, spongy-looking fungal spores. The males contract the fungus, making it impossible for them to mate, and they pass it on to the female when they attempt mating.

Males mate as many times as possible during their short adult life. When the female mates, the male injects a seminal plug into her, preventing her from mating again. However, entomologists believe she digests it over time and it turns out to be very nutritious, like a nuptial gift.

Some trees produce tissue that kills the eggs inserted by the female cicada, killing them, almost like the tree's immune system.

As the population becomes fragmented, it becomes more susceptible to predators.

Bard College, located in Annandale-on-Hudson, is one of several sites where Rick Karban, a professor of entomology at the University of California at Davis, has been tracking this brood's population density since 1979. Walking around the area he studies, there are visible beige, empty cicada shells planted on the side of a snow-white building. Dead cicada carcasses are piled up by the hundreds at the bottom of trees, like wood chips. Live cicadas inhabit almost every visible green leaf and tree branch on the edge of a wooded area, letting out an audible squawk if one happens to be squashed underneath your feet.

"This area is as dense as I've ever seen. It's crazy," Karban said. "It's been estimated that the biomass of cicadas— the weight of them if you collected them all up — exceeds the weight of cattle if you allowed them to graze this same area. There would be more weight of cicadas than this field could support in cattle. They are by far and away the most abundant herbivores in these forests, but they're underground (almost) all of the time so we don't pay much attention to them."

Kritsky said people started tracking cicadas in the 1600s. In the 1800s, entomologists would map cicada emergences by sending postcards to schools and postmen to see if the insects spread in a geographic area.

When the two World Wars began in the early and mid-20th century, cicada record-keeping was put on the back burner as many of the entomologists were sent off to battle, Kritsky said. After World War II ended, not many states resumed their recording because it was assumed they already knew what parts of the country were infested.

With the last recorded cicadas in Albany County in the early 20th century, it is uncertain when the cicadas disappeared from the area for good. It could have been at one of the 17-year intervals when the record-keepers were on hiatus, but that is information that may never be known. The question if the cicadas will ever make an appearance in Albany again has yet to be answered. "If they were brought to the Albany area they would probably survive, but they wouldn't thrive," Karban said. He said the experiment of trying to introduce a brood to a new region has been tried, but has failed on every occasion.

It may be a relief to some, never having to worry about a flying cicada headed straight for their head while enjoying a game of boccie ball. To others, it's missing out on one of nature's most awe-inspiring creatures.

"To me, there are few real natural spectacles in North America," Karban says. "All of the grazing ungulates in Yellowstone, the salmon jumping out of the American River every fall, the monarchs' flight to Mexico for the winter and then back. If I think of what are the incredible things that are going on in terms of natural history in North America, this is one of them."